Much of this material
was once available on SYD Records in
the mid-1990s but if you blinked you
missed it. Aulos has released its own
Sitkovetsky volume, the promised first
in an edition that has yet to appear.
Given the existence of this new Artek
five disc set, all available singly,
there’s little likelihood, or indeed
necessity for Aulos to continue -review.
There is duplication between that single
Aulos disc and Artek in all except the
Sibelius Concerto – which may yet appear
in this new series if more volumes are
to be forthcoming.
This new survey bears
the name of Dmitry Sitkovetsky as co-producer.
Special thanks are offered to his mother
and Yulian’s widow, Bella Davidovich,
as well as Vitaly and Larissa Sitkovetsky
and Susan Roberts. This carries with
it the imprimatur of the family. The
transfers have been carried out with
care and skill, though none was the
subtlest examples of Soviet recording
techniques, even for the time. Most
are very blowsy and close up to the
microphone. Don’t look for - or expect
- any sophistication from the 1950s
set-ups.
Collectors however
will be interested in the performances
of the tragically short-lived Sitkovetsky.
Volume 1 gives us his Tartini Devil’s
Trill where we find Sitkovetsky the
thorough going Romantic. His sound can
be raw, gutsy and masculine and intensely
exciting. He tends to preen in the double
stops, and is fatally metrical in Kreisler’s
cadenza. He also lacks his older compatriot
David Oistrakh’s balancing of classicist
restraint and tensile projection. The
Bach sonata is digitally impressive
but rather deliberate and again afflicted
with a certain metronomic approach.
Lower strings are sometimes slow to
sound. In the Chaconne he indulges extremes
of dynamics and is highly subjectivist
in approach. Phrasing however remains
dull and accelerandi sound unnatural.
A disappointing performance. The Mozart
sonata is better by far. He’s occasionally
trenchant and fully lyrical; there’s
plenty of emotive vibrato and warmly
phrased generosity in the slow movement,
though he overindulges accompanying
figures to a damaging degree.
Volume II is something
of a violinistic playground. Vieuxtemps’s
baroque leaning opus is discharged with
gallantry and vigour, though Sitkovetsky
does sometimes slide up under the note.
Saint-Saëns’s Concerto,
the Konzertstuck, in the Spiering arrangement
is rather a brittle performance and
heavy handed despite the advantage of
Kogan’s accompanist Mitnik. Ysaÿe’s
Sixth solo sonata is quite fast and
just a little flat dramatically. The
Sarasate Habanera is full of
rich and explicit voicings from husky
to whistling and well-characterised,
though very over-emoted in places. The
recording of the Moszkowski is
rather hollow but Sitkovetsky plays
it with lissom articulation.
The close up perspective
rather robs the otherwise excitingly
played Glazunov Concerto of
a certain aristocracy of utterance.
But the throaty tone convinces and there’s
plenty of raw succulence here, albeit
occasionally rather blowsy lower string
work in the cadenza. It’s neither as
quick or as elevated as Milstein’s traversals.
The Lyapunov Concerto is written
in fully romantic-rhapsodic style. The
recording is typical Soviet era vintage;
trumpets to shrivel your insides, the
hairs of Sitkovetsky’s bow just inside
your ear canal. But how gorgeously he
caresses the second subject of the first
movement and how much beauty he finds
throughout. He takes a high tensile
approach to the slow movement which
because of it – and the recording –
can sound somewhat over vibrated. There’s
certainly no floating of tone here,
a la Franco-Belgian players. Still,
one can but admire his stupendously
commanding technique in the ripely overlong
cadenza.
Lehman’s Concerto
is couched in Soviet folkloric style.
It sounds like it was written in the
late 1940s – this recording was made
in 1951. There are touches of what sounds
to British ears like Vaughan Williams
along the way – plenty of folk themes
and sweetness, lightly orchestrated
with a string gauze of great transparency
and warmth. The finale lets things down,
a rather predictable vivo of vacuous
excitement with a whopping great edit
or join at 4.04. Magnetically played
though.
Paganini’s First
Concerto suits Sitkovetsky’s virtuoso
status and silvery tone in the higher
positions. Though he’s so far forward
in the balance, which makes the orchestral
contribution somewhat tenuous, we can
that much better listen to his coruscating
gymnastics and effortless projection.
His finale is exceptional. The Moses
Fantasia bears witness to his high standing
as a Paganinian – and with lashings
of husky tone he displays remarkable
technical address allied to exciting
colouristic shading. He manages the
Ernst with cavalier bravado and
tosses off the Bazzini with nonchalance
if not quite, say, Příhoda
or Perlman’s blistering brilliance.
The final disc unearths
Shostakovich and Khachaturian
concertos, both highly auspicious additions
to the discography. In the latter, with
the composer conducting, he is grittier
and with a less intensely focused core
sound than his contemporary Kogan, who
was also recorded in this work with
the composer conducting, but five years
earlier (see Kogan’s Brilliant Classics
ten disc box). It’s instructive to hear
the differences – how Sitkovetsky gives
us a wispy gauze of sound in the slow
movement but ultimately lacks Kogan’s
subtle shadings across all four strings
as well as his eloquence and control.
Kogan is notably more relaxed in the
opening movement as well.
Shostakovich
No.1 provides another study in contrasts.
Kogan is invariably, in all his performances,
more malleable in terms of tempo and
colour than Sitkovetsky. He’s also decidedly
quicker in the great Passacaglia, quicker
even than Sitkovetsky – these in the
days before this movement became stretched
to ever more giant proportions. Sitkovetsky
has Gauk on the platform and he is suitably
gaunt and powerful if a bit ragged at
times. Kogan is a steelier presence
in this work, Sitkovetsky more openly
expressive.
This then is the province
of the violin collector. With unbalanced
recordings and unvarnished sound the
casual listener will want to look elsewhere.
That much is obvious. But Sitkovetsky
admirers, of whom there are a good number,
will want to snap these up because his
discs have, historically speaking, seldom
stayed around very long. His was a wonderful,
comet-like talent. My reservations are
there to alert listeners who may not
know just what sort of a player he was.
Jonathan Woolf
ARTEK AR 0031-2 [68:49] 
